Jack Brymer

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 30:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1979.

Jack Brymer0:29

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

Jack Brymer0:33

Uh

Presenter0:33

Uh

Jack Brymer0:33

On our desert island

Presenter0:33

This week is the clarinetist, saxophonist and broadcaster Jack Brymer. Jack, most of your professional life you've spent in the company of about ninety other people in symphony orchestras. Is it going to be difficult to take loneliness?

Presenter0:48

I think I would find it extremely difficult to take loneliness. Not for that reason, because I'm a bit of a loner.

Jack Brymer0:53

Oh no.

Presenter0:54

But I would not like being on a desert island alone, because I really do believe that one human being without another has no significance whatsoever. I think it's a dead loss.

Presenter1:04

How did you set about choosing your aid records? You looking back?

Presenter1:08

I've just thought of things which were significant to my life and to those around me, and uh they've automatically slotted in, I think. What's the first one?

Presenter1:19

The first one I'd like to be one of the very first pieces I did play with Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It's an overture by Berlius called The Corsair.

Presenter2:25

Le Corsaire by Bellio's Sir Thomas Beacham conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Now, Jack, you're from the northeast. Yes, from the Tyneside area. From South Shields, actually. Near the sea. Very close to the sea, indeed. Was there a lot of music in your family?

Presenter2:42

No, very little, except that we all did play music around the piano, and the way that these things did happen in families at that time. A big family? Only three of us, my two sisters and myself. Why did you start to play the clarinet?

Presenter2:55

Purely because there was one in the house.

Presenter2:58

Who had left it there? My father, who was an amateur player, he was a builder, and he did play the clarinet, or as we all called it then, the clarionnette.

Presenter3:07

And there was one there and at the age of about four I discovered this delightful toy and uh I made it mine and that was it. Like climbing Everest. You have to do it because it's there.

Presenter3:18

Was there a lot of music at school?

Presenter3:20

Very little indeed, really, because um we were more interested in scholarships and football in that order. What was your ambition? What did you want to be?

Presenter3:30

Well, obviously I did want to be a musician, but at that time, which was in the late twenties, uh talking films having just appeared, unemployment among musicians was very serious, and therefore it was silly to even try to be one.

Speaker 43:40

Uh

Jack Brymer3:40

Uh

Presenter3:43

So I decided I was going to be a schoolmaster, and in particular I wanted to be a teacher of physical training, because I was very interested in games, and as this seemed to be a reasonable thing to do, and I could get to a college, to London University, to do it, this I decided to do.

Jack Brymer4:00

Right.

Presenter4:00

At which point let us break off your second record.

Presenter4:04

Well this I would like to be

Presenter4:06

By a composer whose work has always meant a tremendous amount to me, Mozart.

Presenter4:11

Because I've discovered to my delight in recent years that I was born on his birthday, the 27th of January. But as Kaiser Wilhelm was also born on the same day, it doesn't really mean all that much. However, I must say that this quintet, it's a string quintet, by the way, not a clarinet quintet, has meant a lot to me and to my family because my wife's a viola player and we spent a lot of our spare time as students and a little later playing this sort of music, my transposing furiously on the clarinet, and we got to know it from the inside, as it were. And this being a work for two violas, I would be playing second viola on the clarinet and my wife first viola, and this was a family affair.

Presenter5:53

The opening of the Mozart string quintet number three in G minor, Otto Grummio and Four Friends.

Presenter6:01

So you were going to be a teacher.

Presenter6:03

And you were studying at London University. Which college? Goldsmiths. A a great music centre, I guess. Well now, yes, but then only lesser. Uh but uh all the same.

Jack Brymer6:08

Well now

Presenter6:12

Luckily, uh there were people there terribly interested in orchestral music, and there was a symphony orchestra run as a sort of evening institute, and that was my first taste of a really large symphony orchestra playing there.

Presenter6:25

We were doing jazz gigs as well because you'd got rather good as a jazz man, hadn't you? Yes, I wasn't allowed to, but I did actually sneak out of my hostel on one or two occasions and down to the local roadhouse with an illicit saxophone and do a little bit of work there. But I wasn't supposed to do this because these were very unpermissive days and we were expected to be indoors by about 10.45 instead of 1.15 or whatever it was. You had to climb in, didn't you? Oh yes.

Speaker 46:48

As

Presenter6:52

I used to leave the saxophone under the porch in the garden and get in through the window.

Speaker 46:52

I

Jack Brymer6:52

Uh

Presenter6:56

Ha ha ha.

Presenter6:57

Now when you had finished your teaching studies, what was your first job?

Presenter7:01

I went back to the North East and there I taught um general subjects in um a a junior mixed school at home in South Shields.

Presenter7:12

I then decided that I wanted to come South. There was a reason for this. My fiancé was in Croydon. Oh, yes. And I got a job in a grammar school there, teaching music, physical training and English. Your third record, please.

Presenter7:25

This is a thing of particular significance because my son was born in 1951.

Presenter7:32

And um it was a very bad time for my wife, because there had been a lot of complications and uh nobody expected that this would be a successful event.

Presenter7:40

I when it ha actually happened, a message was handed in.

Presenter7:44

to a recording session at EMI, where we were recording the Sebelius Violin concerto, Sir Thomas Beacham and Isaac Stern.

Presenter7:52

Everything stopped, and there was dollification, and Sir Thomas made a speech. We then started with the slow movement which has a clarinet duet to start it, and Sir Thomas beat sixteen instead of eight. And when I had pointed this out to him, all he said was, My dear boy, who's had this child? Have you or have I?

Presenter8:10

And this, I think, will be the only real bit of clarinet playing you'll hear in this programme. But it takes me right back to that very instant after the announcement of the birth of this son, Tim.

Presenter9:27

The opening of the slow movement of the Sebelius Violin Concerto, Isaac Stern with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and

Presenter9:35

Sir Thomas Beacham again as conductor.

Presenter9:39

How had you got into the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra? We we had left you in this grammar school, teaching boys and girls sport.

Presenter9:47

physical education and music. Now this all started with one unexpected telephone call.

Presenter9:53

Yes, now lots of people have taken the blame for this call, you see. Um I had been mingling with musicians as a sort of semi-professional, playing for the Goldsmith Symphony Orchestra, playing for Ernest Reed and his uh various orchestras, and they were always augmented by famous players like Gerald Jackson, Archie Camden, Dennis Brain.

Presenter10:13

Um somebody must have hinted to Sir Thomas that there was a clarinetist around who might be uh available and might be suitable. And um to my astonishment one day the telephone rang and I clambered down from the roof where I'd been um spreading a little pitch after bombing and um

Presenter10:30

A voice said, mister Brimer, I believe you play the clarionet.

Presenter10:35

This is Sir Thomas Beacham.

Presenter10:38

Of course I immediately thought, I wonder which of my friends this is. But it turned out to be Sir Thomas, and he did want to hear me play the clarinet.

Presenter10:45

And that was the beginning of the whole thing. He had just formed the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Yes, I think it had been going for nine months. And Reginald Kell, who was the very famous clarinet, this was the first clarinet, was going to leave. And Sir Thomas had to find a replacement. And instead of doing the obvious thing and finding a well-known player, he thought, well, I'll have a go and find an unknown one, and did this. You were with Beecham for many years? Sixteen.

Presenter11:10

No, not quite. I I joined him in nineteen forty eight and he died in'sixty one, but I stayed on with the orchestra a little longer. A wonderful character, of course. You had to keep your wits about you.

Presenter11:22

Yes.

Presenter11:23

He was not unpredictable. You could tell exactly the sort of man he was. But.

Presenter11:29

You had to be pretty wide awake because he was so wide awake. He would not ever let you know quite how a work was going to be performed until the actual performance. The rehearsal was to some extent just a familiarization.

Presenter11:44

He would then almost sculpt the work in front of your eyes. It was like seeing somebody creating an image.

Presenter11:50

He did it all by gesture, and it was a most remarkable thing, the way he could actually take a work and present it by gesture.

Presenter11:59

I believe within a fortnight of becoming a professional musician, you were being conducted by Richard Strauss as well.

Presenter12:06

Yes, Strauss was in the last year of his life and we were doing the Strauss Festival and Sir Thomas was conducting some works and Strauss was conducting his great domestic symphony.

Presenter12:17

And Strauss was at every rehearsal and every recording session, supervising everything that went on, leaning over our shoulders, putting marks in the parts, and giving advice. And of course it was a wonderful baptism of fire to be with this man who had produced some of the finest music of his generation.

Presenter12:34

And at a time when his name was already a legend. Well, that must have been pretty exciting. It was.

Presenter12:41

Record number four.

Presenter12:43

Well, this I would like to think would remind me of several delightful occasions when I played with pianist Solomon.

Presenter12:50

There was a lovely occasion when I was working at Brighton.

Presenter12:53

And having rehearsed, I I went out, but forgot something, and I came back after about half an hour, found the place completely in darkness.

Presenter13:03

And Solomon was practising. For his own delight he was playing the D flat nocturne of Chopin, and it was the most incredibly private audition of this man purely enjoying himself, and I would like to remind myself of that wonderful moment.

Presenter14:19

Solomon playing Chopin's D flat nocturn.

Presenter14:23

I've been looking at your new book, Jack, from Where I Sit, and uh you also mention in those early days working with Stravinsky.

Presenter14:32

Yes, well, I did work with Stravitsky a great deal, uh almost until the end.

Presenter14:36

Uh it was a great privilege.

Presenter14:38

He appeared to bring something with him, an understanding of his music, which you couldn't get from anybody else. He had this incredible feeling, a natural feeling for odd rhythms. He could think in fives and sevens and elevens and thirteens that we couldn't. And he was able to really reveal what he felt about this.

Presenter14:57

Now we talked about Beecham who was your your mentor.

Presenter15:00

You must have worked with most of the great conductors.

Presenter15:03

during the last years since the war.

Presenter15:06

Yes, I missed one. I missed Toscanini. I only saw Toscanini at work, but I did play with all the rest, I think, and uh have great memories of many of them, because a great conductor is a most memorable person always. What is the attitude when you're sitting there at your desk and you've got

Presenter15:22

The 29th conductor in your experience teaching you how to play the Beethoven fifth.

Presenter15:30

can be remarkably revealing. You can get a man like Rudolph Kempe who will take

Presenter15:35

Abraham Score

Presenter15:37

And although you've played it for forty years, he'll point out something you hadn't noticed, and something quite significant.

Presenter15:44

After you left the Royal Philharmonic, you went to the BBC. Was that an improvement or not? I mean, what about conditions? Well, nothing could be an improvement on the ARPU, as it was on Beecham's Day. There's not been anything like it before or since.

Presenter15:59

The BBC did not suit me particularly because I like the variety of orchestral playing and I like the variety of places. I hate to go to the same seat every day. It was a good job. It was a pleasant job. But it had this disadvantage. It was a cloistered occupation and I didn't appreciate it so much. The BBC Symphony Orchestra possibly plays a wider variety of music than most orchestras. You had all the modern stuff. How do you take to that?

Presenter16:27

Well, um no, I don't take to it.

Presenter16:32

Not really. I'm interested in all sorts of music and I do actually quite enjoy playing avant-garde music, but I hate rehearsing avant-garde music because it's terribly time consuming and um quite painful.

Presenter16:47

And you finished up, of course, in the London Symphony Orchestra. Yes.

Presenter16:51

For many years you were at Gleinborn every summer. Now that must have been a marvellous occupation. That was quite delightful because we used to go as a family, my wife, myself and son, and settle down there and thoroughly enjoy everything that was going on, the golf, the tennis, the swimming, the parties, lovely hotels, wonderful dinners. And a little opera in the air. Occasional bits of opera, yes.

Jack Brymer17:09

Yeah.

Speaker 417:09

Everybody

Jack Brymer17:09

Occasional bits

Presenter17:11

But it was so much a family affair, you were so much a part of the scene, and um the the the people who worked there were amazingly pleasant to be with, and great artists, tremendous artists, all of them.

Presenter17:25

Well, some more music.

Presenter17:27

Well, I should like to remind myself, I think, of this delightful um

Presenter17:31

activity at Blindborn, and also my favorite composer, Mozart, by playing Barberina's Tiny Aria from Figallo. This is uh a girl, a peasant, looking for a uh a scarf pin that's been lost, and she's confused and quite breathless, but entirely delightful.

Speaker 417:51

From the screen!

Speaker 417:54

Fuck his song of race.

Speaker 417:59

For kissing

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A lot of

Speaker 418:11

Oh not marvel.

Speaker 418:16

In the screen, I don't know what

Speaker 418:19

A Christmas.

Speaker 418:35

Uh

Speaker 418:43

Chris Hoover

Presenter18:49

Margaret Price as Barberina at the opening of the fourth act of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

Presenter18:55

Now apart from regular sessions with the orchestra, there are all the freelance jobs, the films and records. You've been a a session man, as as it's known in the trade, for many years. Yes, and you know, it's a remarkable life, inasmuch as you can run into almost anything. I remember going one day to do a session which was obviously uh an advertisement for something or other for Christmas.

Presenter19:17

And uh a very fine musician called Francis Chagrin had written a duet for flute

Presenter19:23

and a clarinet.

Presenter19:25

Thousands of notes excruciatingly difficult. It lasted about thirty five seconds, and took us about three hours to master the art of playing it at all. Gerald Jackson and myself

Presenter19:35

And at the end of this terrific scramble a gentleman came close to the microphone and simply said, For Christmas.

Presenter19:43

And I discovered afterwards that he not only got three times as much money as we did, but he got a repeat every time the thing appeared, and we didn't. There's no justice.

Presenter19:52

You've always been devoted to chamber music.

Presenter19:55

Very much so.

Presenter19:57

I should hate to be a chamber musician only, because this I think, rather like being um a sonata player, which I am also, of course, that's a sort of chamber music, can be a lonely activity.

Presenter20:08

And I think to travel around with just a quartet

Presenter20:11

Oh, just for the pianist?

Presenter20:13

and meet a few people and um

Presenter20:16

Then be on your own isn't quite the same as travelling with a large company. And of course you're also a BBC disc jockey, a rather superior one on Radio Three.

Jack Brymer20:23

The wrong soup

Jack Brymer20:24

Radio

Presenter20:25

It's not all discs happily. It's uh it's also presenting um orchestral programmes. You know, it can be anything, and uh I'm delighted with it. I I love doing it.

Presenter20:35

Record number six.

Presenter20:37

Well, I'd like this to reflect my interest in jazz, because I am interested in jazz, but it certainly wouldn't be a clarinet record I'd take with me.

Presenter20:45

because that would be too frustrating to have to actually analyze a clarinet record while not being able to play. Um I'd like to hear Oscar Peterson and the older Oscar Peterson uh style, a man tremendously interested in the the the the harmonic progressions of his jazz.

Presenter22:02

Have you met Miss Jones?

Presenter22:04

Oscapita Smith.

Presenter22:06

Now what are your occupations outside music?

Presenter22:09

Hobbies. Well, I'm rather fortunate in that I live with a golf course literally at the bottom of the garden. So that's one thing I have to uh do. And then of course the garden itself, which is a big one. Does demand a lot. Uh other than that, there's not much I have time for. You did mention at one time that you were up the on the roof putting some pitch on it or something, which means that you are a handyman.

Jack Brymer22:23

New

Presenter22:30

Uh fairly, yes. I don't make furniture or anything like that, though I've tried. But I can wield a hammer and a few nails, and um What I'm getting at is how good you're going to be at looking after yourself on the island.

Presenter22:42

A as a boy, did you do any camping out? Yes. Uh I'd be pretty good at that sort of thing. Um and I think I could manage to do a bit of fishing.

Presenter22:51

And I think I'd fix up some sort of shack. Mm-hmm. I'm quite certain I'd also fix up a boat or a raft of some sort. Yes, um mostly rowing rather than sailing, however. I was at one time connected with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Band as a youth.

Jack Brymer23:07

Book

Presenter23:09

And we made a terrible mistake. We were told we could take our choice of rowing in cutters or whalers. Now a cutter sounds delightfully small in comparison with a whaler. It wasn't until we got in that we realized it's three times as big. And I was at the bow where you had you're the only one with only one oar.

Jack Brymer23:22

And I was

Presenter23:27

So I was on my own. It's quite a tough game. You'll know next time. I'll know next time. Record number seven.

Presenter23:33

This I should like to be uh one of the most important philosophical uh pieces of chamber music, I think, uh by Beethoven.

Presenter23:42

One of his late quartets, the um C sharp minor.

Presenter23:46

This to me epitomises how a composer can take a form in music, like a fugue, which is a dullest ditchwater thing really, but by the treatment of it make it into almost a lament, and the incredible way that this great composer, at the end of his life,

Presenter24:05

Could get this fugue, which is a a musical tapestry, to mean so much, is I think something I should like to remind myself of.

Presenter25:13

The opening of the string quartet in C sharp minor, opus one hundred and thirty-one, the Amadairs quartet.

Presenter25:21

Now we come to your last record. What's that to be?

Presenter25:23

Well, I'd like it to be something that I recorded with Sir Thomas again, but this was very early in the picture. It was when Strauss was in the studio and when the young Tortellier came to record Don Quixot with this magnificent orchestra as a young man and with Strauss and with Beecham there, he was able to achieve, I think, something quite tremendous. And I feel that this would remind me of the beginning of the whole thing.

Presenter26:56

The closing passage of Don Quixote by Richard Strauss, Paul Tortellier with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham. If you could take just one disc out of the eight, which would it be? I think it would have to be Mozart and I think it would have to be the G minor quintet.

Presenter27:13

and you're allowed to take one luxury with you.

Presenter27:16

Could I please have a piano of some sort? It needn't be a new one, it could be quite old, as long as somebody could have left inside it a few of the Beethoven sonatas. Right, and it it will be an up, right? You don't mind that. I don't mind that at all.

Speaker 427:26

The majority of the

Presenter27:27

And one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island, and we frown on big encyclopedias. Yes, well, I think I'd like to explore some Dickens if I could. A volume of two or three of his books would be lovely. Right, we'll choose two or three and we'll have them bound together for you. And thank you, Jack Brimer, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. And thank you so much, Roy, for the privilege of actually being on your programme. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 328:02

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 328:06

For more downloads, please visit the Radio 4 website.

Jack Brymer28:10

Desert Island Discs was introduced by Roy Plumley, who also devised the programme.

Jack Brymer28:15

Producer was Derek Drescher.

Jack Brymer28:18

Next Saturday the castaway will be Sir Robert Meyer, founder of Youth and Music.

Jack Brymer28:23

And of the Robert Meyer Concerts for Children.

Jack Brymer28:25

That's next week, at the same time, six fifteen.